Just a quick post to remind anyone who is thinking of contributing to the first Dark Mountain Journal, that you have three weeks left in which to do it. The deadline expires at midnight on 31st December.
There’s more information here on the kind of thing we might be looking for; and here is the nitty-gritty.
We’re also issuing a call to anyone who might have something to contribute to the Dark Mountain Festival next May to get in touch. More on that here; and here is the Dark Mountain Facebook group, complete with official invite.
This might be anyone from performers, visual artists or musicians to people with experience of organising or designing events. If you’ve got something to offer, please don’t be shy. This is the time to offer it. Drop us a line at info@dark-mountain.net
Okay, you’ve tempted me too much. I’m gonna write.
Here on the benighted north coast of New South Wales, Australia (surely one of the world’s most perfect locales) the weather has been odd lately. Actually, for several years. Last week we had three days straight of 41 to 42 degrees, despite the official forecast of 39 degrees. These days, whenever the sky is clear, I can fairly safely assume it will be at least two degrees hotter than predicted. This morning I travelled a mountain highway where a week-long (and counting) bushfire has blackened thousands of hectares of forest. At one point it was obvious that a true fire-storm had jumped the highway — the safety rails are blackened, and the earth burnt, even where it had been free of grass. And, wierdly, the brown leaves of gum-trees lie horizontally, frozen, as it were, by fire travelling sideways.
Thanks to the “Black Saturday” tragedy in Victoria last summer when nearly 200 souls perished, the authorities have designated a new fire danger category: “Catastrophic”. Previously the scariest days were denoted “Extreme”, but it seems that Extreme isn’t, um, extreme enough for the new reality. What’s next — Cataclysmic? Apocalyptic?
But it’s not all searing heat and smothering smoke here in the Lucky Country. No, we also get rain, and lots of it, but mainly by way of the sky literally falling. Like, half a metre a day. Then there’s another drought. Then another deluge. Furthermore, this blessed rain is highly localised, falling only on the just, while the unjust can only look on in awe.
Gotta go, it might be about to hail on the car.
Will only English work be accounted?
Work will need to be in the English language, but we’ll be publishing contributions from all over the world, and welcome work from any place and perspective.
I must, then, doubt my English to be good enough to publish in.